LEXUS DESIGN AMAZING 2014

LEXUS DESIGN AMAZING at Milan Design Week 2014 was an exhibition introduced to communicate this ethos in a visible and tangible form.

Visitors experienced three new works created by world-renowned designers in response to the Amazing in Motion theme. Full of unexpected and exhilarating encounters, the event allowed visitors to experience our forward thinking approach to design. The venue also showcased the twelve winning works from the Lexus Design Award 2014, an international competition that aspires to nurture and support a new generation of designers from around the world.

Any motion can be amazing; it depends on the memories it evokes. Any action can be a dance; it depends on the harmony you put into it. Life itself is a dance. Everything from infinitesimally small atomic structures to the cosmic motion of planets and galaxies seem to constitute a harmonic dance. You add light and sound and here it is, a small representation of the whole: ‘We Dance’.

Individual elements orbit around the mirrored sphere in the centre, directing beams of light toward the centre. The overall effect gives birth to a harmony and unity between the orbiting elements, the illumination, and the music. Viewers also become an integral part of this harmony as the light reflected from the sphere and sound reach out to them, and as they view their own reflection in the face of the mirrored sphere.

Fabio Novembre was born in Lecce in 1966 and graduated in Architecture from Politecnico di Milano in 1992. After studying filmmaking at New York University in 1993, he proceeded to open his own studio in 1994. His work has been published all over the world for its visionary approach, much of which has been with leading Italian Design brands.

There are forces in nature that are beyond the control of mankind. We have learned how fragile we are in the face of such forces. However, we have also learned the importance of accepting nature and learning to live in harmony with it.

Interconnected and interdependent, there is a constant give-and-take in nature. Life does not rest. Our collective motion, nature's response to our movements is essential to our planet's delicate balance.

When we are one with nature, we are at our most powerful. Our movement together gives us life. Our movement forward creates the next generation of ideas.

Life is always more amazing in motion.
“Interconnection” hangs from the ceiling on threads, with individual elements creating three-dimensional depth. The individual elements move in response to the natural flow of air as visitors move through the space. Light and shadow shift constantly as the elements move.

Nao Tamura studied communication design at Parsons School of Design in New York. She later founded her studio in Tokyo and is currently based in New York City. As a product of the Tokyo and New York City creative communities, her solutions are equally at ease in the world of 2-D and 3-D with an uncanny ability to find that emotional connection with the audience. Nao defies the kind of categorization that the industry status-quo often insists upon. Her unique solutions are more than simply design and possess a rare balance of innovation and beauty.

“TRANSFORM” echoes the theme of “Amazing in Motion” by fusing technology and design to celebrate its transformation from a piece of still furniture to a dynamic machine driven by the stream of data and energy. Created by Professor Hiroshi Ishii and the Tangible Media Group from the MIT Media Lab, TRANSFORM aims to inspire viewers with unexpected transformations, as well as the aesthetics of the complex machine in motion.

The work is comprised of three dynamic shape displays that move more than one thousand pins up and down in real time to transform the tabletop into a dynamic tangible display. The kinetic energy of the viewers, captured by a sensor, drives the wave motion represented by the dynamic pins.

The motion design is inspired by the dynamic interactions among wind, water and sand in nature, Escher's representations of perpetual motion, and the attributes of sand castles built at the seashore. TRANSFORM tells the story of the conflict between nature and machine, and its reconciliation, through the ever-changing tabletop landscape.

Hiroshi Ishii is a Jerome B. Wiesner Professor of Media Arts and Sciences, at the MIT Media Lab. He directs Tangible Media Group and co-directs Things That Think (TTT) consortium. Hiroshi Ishii's research focuses upon the design of seamless interfaces between humans, digital information, and the physical environment. At the MIT Media Lab, he founded the Tangible Media Group in fall 1995 pursuing a new vision of Human Computer Interaction (HCI): “Tangible Bits” through physical embodiment digital information. In 2012, he presented the new vision “Radical Atoms” to take a leap beyond “Tangible Bits” by assuming a hypothetical generation of materials that can change form and appearance dynamically, becoming as reconfigurable as pixels on a screen.

The MIT Media Lab actively promotes a unique, antidisciplinary culture, going beyond known boundaries and disciplines to encourage the most unconventional mixing and matching of seemingly disparate research areas. It creates disruptive technologies that happen at the edges, pioneering such areas as wearable computing, tangible interfaces, and affective computing. Today, faculty members, research staff, and students at the Lab work in approximately 30 research groups on more than 350 projects that range from neuro-biology, bio-mechatronics, computational photography, to electric car.